


This Time, Root Almost Drowns

by SloanGreyMercyDeath



Series: Light Summer, Dark Summer [3]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Bible references, F/F, Ocean Gothic, On the boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 00:53:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14249550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SloanGreyMercyDeath/pseuds/SloanGreyMercyDeath
Summary: Root stands on a hill overlooking the ocean, her white dress whipping around her, as she stares out into the sea. Shaw lives on a boat, more rust than metal, thinking about her blood-soaked fingers and listening to the wind that comes over the hill.





	This Time, Root Almost Drowns

**Author's Note:**

> They all begin the same. One thing changes and it all changes.

There are places where time moves differently. It can race through cities, bouncing off walls and windows, streaking through underground tunnels, gaining speed until years pass by in minutes and progress never stops. It can crawl across prairies, walking beside antelopes, sleeping between wooden planks and lazily swimming in water towers, slow and steady and nothing ever changes.

Here, on this hill, towering above that shoreline, it saturates the air. It stings your eyes like salt, hovers in the sky like the charge of lightning, lingers in the sand waiting for the ocean to sweep it away. Every grain of sand holds a minute and every time the ocean steals one, it gives two back. No one lives here. They stay here.

The people in this hillside town couldn’t tell you when they are; they count the time in generations and fishing seasons and influential storms. The stores and houses and barns are pale with wear, old and faded and still. They whisper stories and promises and memories when the wind blows through their splintered walls.

It only takes a blink to get to the ocean from the sign that hangs above the edge of town. Three steps from the sign and the rocky ground becomes sand and you sink. It requires speed, the sandy path, and, when people travel to the shore, they lift their skirts or coats or cloaks and run as fast as they can. The sand that holds minutes pushes them onward, even as it tries to pull them back. The hard water stops the journey with a splash and the cold, crisp shock freezes them in place.

There’s a pier that stands proud against the murky water. Where it starts and the sand ends is unclear, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can always find it. One step on the boards and it creaks, singing the song of something trapped between land and sea, beckoning you out into the unending waves. Boats come and go, but there is always someone there. Whether they are waiting to leave, or longing to stay, it’s impossible to tell, but if you look to the shore, you will find a voyager.

It’s a big ocean, the kind that makes you feel small and vast and infinite and finite all at the same time. It stretches out forever and the horizon is fuzzy through a haze of perpetual storms. When you’re on the water, on a small fishing boat that is made of rust and respect and godlessness, when there is no hope for home or time for tears, when there is only you and the ocean and the air, it is comforting. The wine-colored water is impossibly dark, crystalline and ravaging.

The steadiness of land, calm and solid and real, doesn’t exist on the water and however far you go there will always be a grain of sand to call you back. A lot happens out on the water that can not be accounted for. Sometimes boat disappear, people disappear, time disappears. There is nothing about water that will hold time and when you dip your blood-soaked fingers into the ocean it will clean them and your memories and leave you with nothing.

The woman who lives on the ocean is left with nothing. Nothing, but her boat made of rust, her blood-soaked fingers, and her salt-covered skin. She is lost at sea with no anchor. Years ago, this boat was full of life and fish and money, but then came an influential storm. The town was destroyed, the boat was destroyed, and the life was destroyed. Now, the town is rebuilt, her boat is rebuilt, and her blood-soaked fingers still tie perfect knots.

She doesn’t blame herself. It is impossible for her to blame anything, but god and the sea and the frailty of children. She can not feel regret or sadness or loneliness, but they sting her eyes with every salty breeze, begging for her attention. She ignores them and focuses on the beacon on the shore.

From the ocean, it is easy to focus on the hillside town. It is easy to focus on one building in particular. At the top of the hill, there is a large white house, glorious and clean and expanse. It’s surrounded by a metal fence that gleams in the sunlight and moonlight and lightning. It is always visible from the sea.

Sometimes, on certain days, there is someone standing in front of the house at the top of the hill. She is always dressed in white, always has her hair down, always staring off toward the ocean, with her toes curled into the grass. The wind loves her, more than it loves the trees or the splintered town walls. It kisses her gently, whipping her hair to side like a flag and blowing her white, linen dress in every direction.

Shaw has not seen the brown-haired flowing woman today. The house looms large against a stormy sky and the wind howls loudly, despairing that it will not kiss its long distance lover before the fall of night. Shaw squints at the sun through salt-dried eyes and knows that if the priest’s blithe daughter has not appeared by now, she will not appear until the next sun rises.

Her ghosts beg her to turn around, head for shore, run to the house, save the girl. They have stared at each other for years, but Shaw knows she’s too weak and the priest’s grip is too strong and the woman is probably too frail. She lingers for one more moment before turning away and crossing the deck, her gloved hand sliding noisily along the railing.

Above her head, faded white letters spell the name of her rusted barge. She doesn’t know the story; she wasn’t allowed to attend the services her captor of god would preach. The unknown reference hangs above her on the side of her control room. If she ever docked for more than a day, she might go into town and buy fresh paint. She might go into town and ask someone what it meant.

She’s been at sea for over a week now, fishing and avoiding the priest and his empty eyes. Sometimes, she strays far enough that the house feels like a distant memory and she wonders if it’s real, if she’s real, if her ghosts and her tragedy and her twice-built boat is real. Her ghosts tug on her hair and she pushes it up beneath her woolen cap.

The pier is close enough now that she could be docked in an hour, the house just slightly blurred atop its hill. Leaning against the railing, staring off into the horizon, she takes a deep breath, the salt feeling comfortable in her weathered lungs. The wind is sharp and cold and Shaw feels dull and impossible, the slow lapping of the waves against her rust lulling her into a fog, and she pulls her gloves off and her heavy coat off, letting them all fall to the floor with a quiet thump.

That coat belongs to the father she never knew, the only Father she’s known told her every night before bed that she’d arrived wrapped in it. He would pull it over her as she lay bloody and beaten on her cot in the corner of the church’s barn, whispering a nightly prayer and sliding his steel-boned belt back through its loops. She glances over her shoulder at the house, its white façade mocking her solitude.

Her oldest ghost runs its frozen hand along her arm and she sighs as goosebumps rise. It is hours still until nightfall and she has no task left for the day. Something bumps against her boat and she rises to her toes to lean over the railing. It pushes into her stomach, solid and untrustworthy all at once. Bumping against her boat is a woman, pale and lifeless and achingly familiar. It is the woman who lives in the white house, her brown hair floating around her like a halo, an angel sent by the angry god.

Grabbing a rope from the deck, rough against her calloused hand, Shaw ties it to her railing, praying to no one that the rope holds and the railing holds and her now numb hands hold. She wraps the other end of the rope around her waist, threads it through her belt loops, ignores the memories it dredges up, ties the ends together in front of her.

Her feet find their grip on the highest metal rung and she takes one deep breath before diving off the edge of her rusted home. The wind rushes over her face, her ghosts throw her hat to the sky, and when she hits the water it is shocking and cold and her long, dark hair wraps around her eyes and blinds her. She can’t see, the water has knocked the air from her lungs, and she is certain she will join her beautiful counterpart in the depths.

Then, she surfaces, and she sucks in salt water and metal air and pushes her hair from her face. The boat still floats beside her and the woman still floats in front of her, her pale dress sheer from the ocean water. Shaw wraps her rough hands around the woman as gently as possible, drapes her over her shoulder as gently as possible and hoists them upwards.

The woman is limp over her shoulder. She weighs almost nothing, lighter than the ghosts that help them upwards. The rope is rough and frayed in Shaw’s hands and the smell of rust and salt and woman is sharp in her nose. A moment passes, her muscles scream, and she has made it to the top of the railing. It takes maneuvering to get back onto solid, swaying ground and Shaw’s feet finally hit the floor.

The frail woman lands on the deck ungracefully, her normally flowing dress and hair plastered to her body with freezing water and even the wind can’t pry it them from her. Shaw stares down at her, sucking in sharp, stinging breathes, and wonders if the angry god on the hill had sent this girl as payment for his sins.

She kneels reverentially, bowing at the alter of death and sin and reaches an unsteady hand towards the angel. What if she is dead? What then? Would the flicker of hope in Shaw’s chest be crushed, a cruel reminder that happiness does not belong in the hearts of the empty?

She presses her ear to the woman’s chest, listening for even the whisper of a heartbeat. Her ghosts tell her she should be scared, should be nervous, should be hopeful, but when she hears a weakened flutter from the woman’s breast, she feels only the chill of the ocean and the damp linen of the woman’s dress.

A moment later, she feels her newfound burden grow. There is a woman on her rusted tragedy, half-drowned and very dangerous. How had she ended up here? Shaw reaches for her coat, pulling it over the woman from the hill, covering her almost naked body. Why were they so close now, after years with miles between them?

Perhaps, she thinks, falling to the side and letting her body relax on the deck, her eyes staring at the woman’s pale, unmoving face, perhaps the woman had jumped. The sun had risen to another hopeless day and when the woman stepped out into her cage of iron, she’d had enough. Perhaps the jump had looked possible, a running start and one could land in the ocean.

The jump is not possible. Shaw had spent too many days staring at the house from the pier, she knew the distance between them, felt it keenly with every breath. Her benefactor had never allowed her to climb the hill, she’d never met his daughter, didn’t know the girl she’s gifted with pain. Now, they are inches apart and Shaw’s body is aching to touch her fallen angel.

She scoots closer to her unwitting passenger, letting her knee touch the woman’s thigh. This guest of hers is taller than her, long and lean and wistful. From their usual distance, it is impossible to tell how dissimilar they are, but this close, Shaw feels small and unsteady. She should have protected the woman now sprawled across her grimy floor. Above them, the sky grows darker, the sun blocked by thickening clouds.

Perhaps the priest of an angry god had finally gone too far. Shaw reaches out with a gentle hand and runs it along the woman’s arm. It is softer than anything she has ever touched in her life and she feels something run through her body that she has never felt before. Her fingers freeze on an almost black bruise.

The priest-turned-tormenter-turned-benefactor had squeezed this angel’s arm until it was marred and Shaw doesn’t know how to feel about it or feel at all or feel about her part in the pain. She presses her finger into the bruise, eyes fixed on the unmoving face, watches as the rosy, chapped lips part, waits with bate breath. The lips close again, Shaw relaxes, and the woman from the hill looks dead once more.

Her father, their Father, must have gone too far. This woman’s head must have hit some holy artifact inside the brick and mortar house and the priest must have feared god’s retribution. Shaw has heard about fear, read about it, felt it tickle her throat as a child. Perhaps that’s what had happened.

Maybe it wasn’t something so tragic, something so domestic and evil and sudden. The woman’s chest expands visibly for the first time and Shaw moves backwards, away from the waking ghost. She is still tethered to the railing, still wrapped in splintering rope, still focused on the woman from the hill, and the heels of her boots squeak against the damp, metal deck as she puts distance between them.

Perhaps the woman had run away, finally gathered the courage, raced through the small town, out to the sea. Maybe she’d looked over her shoulder at the white house before diving off the pier and heading for the horizon. Shaw’s boat is dark, the sky is stormy, the woman’s vision may have been blurred with salt and exhaustion.

What should she do? Shaw watches as the woman’s eyes flutter, trying to open, trying to drag their soul out of the darkened depths of death. She licks her lips and tries to reason with herself. Should she take this woman back?

She owes their angry steel-boned owner everything, the boat and her life and the rest of her heartbeats. She owes this woman nothing. This woman was drowning and Shaw pulled her from the water, she is the one in debt, not Shaw. Returning this woman to the priest of an impossible god would lay possibilities at her feet.

Shaw could ask for something from the man, freedom, maybe, or ownership over the soul she isn’t sure she has. The angel sucks in a rasping breath and Shaw’s mind races. She could take the woman to the first port, lie to their captor, face his wrath. They could leave together, the blood-soaked fisherman and the land-locked sacrifice, make a life on the sea, be together.

They didn’t know each other, Shaw remembers, and as the eyes, the pale brown eyes, of her temptation blink open, she can not make up her mind. The woman looks around, sits up, runs her hands over the thick, damp wool of Shaw’s former father’s coat. Shaw licks her lips, the moisture stinging the cracks and the woman finally turns to face her.

“It’s you,” the brown-eyed angel whispers, her voice raspy from the screams that echo down to the water almost every night. “The woman who lives on the ocean.”

“It’s you,” Shaw answers, voice raspy from solitude and salt. “The woman who lives on the hill.”

These words spark something in the pale-skinned woman, taking her newfound breath from her. She scrambles to her feet, the wet metal deck rising and falling with the ocean’s waves, testing her sea legs as she hurries to the unsafe railing. Shaw’s father’s coat pools on the deck and the priest’s daughter stares out to the horizon, taking in the brewing storm and endless, freezing water.

“Did I make it?” she asks the wind. “Am I free?”

The angel turns around and gazes back toward the hill, eyes shimmering as the salty air kisses her hello and dries her flawless skin. Shaw doesn’t move, doesn’t know what to do, hasn’t made up her mind to help or hinder the woman she’s cursed with perpetual torment. She licks her lips again, finding comfort in the taste of salt.

“Your-“ Shaw tries, the words catching in her throat when the living ghost in front of her turns her head. Her familiar ghosts urge her on, lift her to her feet, push her forward a few steps. “Your father will be looking for you.”

Shaw hadn’t realized the woman was bright until the light disappears. The sparkle in her eyes that Shaw had assumed was a gift from the wind dies and something sad replaces it. She sweeps the ship with her eyes, their spotlight landing on the faded paint above the control room and she turns back to Shaw, hands gripping her soaking skirts. The woman is trembling, from chill and wind and an emotion that Shaw cannot name.

“Please,” the woman yells over a crack of thunder, her sheer dress clinging to her lithe body. ”Please don’t take me back. I will not live if we touch shore.”

Shaw shakes her head, giving the unknown emotion a name – fear. The false priest of an evil god knows no mercy and both the angel from the hill and the ocean tragedy know the end to this drama. A tug at Shaw’s chest tells her to take the woman away, sail to a new land, start a new life. A wave rocks the twice-built boat and she remembers who owns her.

“I owe your father a great deal. Your…tragedy is the cost of my freedom. Collateral damage. For this, I apologize. I traded my soul for this ship. Your father keeps me alive and I cannot betray his trust.”

The woman scoffs and looks away, her gaze turning to look into the control room and Shaw breathes easier for a moment. She hasn’t spoken so many words in years and she isn’t sure if they mean what she wants them to, but the brown-haired almost-drowned dream seems to understand.

Shaw watches her peer through dirty glass at the steering wheel, the antiquated equipment, the half-finished mural of a woman on a cliffside painted onto the far wall. Glancing at her coat, Shaw’s numb fingers itch for her knife, for some semblance of power. She saved this woman and this woman demands another favor.

“You must be Sameen,” the woman says. She runs her hand along the glass, walks around the deck, looks up at the faded letters that Sameen has never touched. Along her back runs a jagged scar and Shaw wishes she could kiss it away. “My father speaks about you.”

“Does he?” Shaw asks. She hates that she wants to know, but maybe the false god’s words hold some answer to the problem of the woman and the sea and her debt. Shaw spent many nights listening the priest of no god tell stories of his perfect, pure daughter. “Does he?”

“He does,” the woman confirms. “’Sameen is obedient,’ he says. ‘Sameen listens. Obeys orders. Does as she’s told. She is trustworthy.’”

The words drip with contempt from the woman’s rosy lips and Sameen bristles, not because the words are false, but because they are true. Sameen has swallowed her pride, time and again, allowed this fragile woman pain, allowed the empty-eyed man to control her life. He gets his pound of flesh and Sameen keeps her blood and ship.

The angel turns around, her eyes sharp and angry. “’Sameen is pious,’ he reminds me, steel-boned belt in hand.” She waits for a reaction. The ghosts between them flinch. Shaw does not. “’Sameen is righteous,’ he continues. ‘She is perfect. Pure.’”

Shaw remembers her blood-soaked fingers and feels anything, but pure. If she had a soul, it would be black, rusted and rotting. She crosses her arms, no response at hand. The wind picks up, lifting Shaw’s hair, trying to tug at the woman’s dress. It gives up, blowing off to sea and the ship quiets. The angel from the hill, fallen to the sea, rescued on a rusting barge, stands before Shaw, accusing.

“That man loves you,” she spits.

A wave splashes over the rail, soaking her and making her gasp. The water kisses Sameen’s feet before retreating back to it’s tumultuous depths. The woman pushes her hair from her face, tries to unstick her dress, and the distraction gives Sameen some time to think.

If she leaves the woman behind, Shaw can live with herself. She’s been living with herself for many years and, by now, she’s almost friends with the monster that resides in her bones. The woman’s ghost would join her at sea, one more solitary companion.

She knows the priest’s words are true. Shaw is trustworthy, returning to the hillside town no matter how far she strays. She is obedient to the empty-eyed priest and pious to his false god. The ocean baptizes her every day, scrubbing her free of her sin and she is born again, almost clean. She is perfect. He loves her.

The woman gives up on drying off and stares at Shaw with tired, dying eyes. How can Shaw dream of love if the one she pines for is dead?

She realizes the fraying rope is still threaded through her belt loops, tying her to this god forsaken ship and she feels trapped to her ocean-bound home. Her numb fingers pull at the knot, trying to free herself if only in this one, small way. The woman’s eyes drop to Shaw’s fumbling fingers and she sighs.

The noise brushes across Shaw’s face, audible even over the approaching storm, and Shaw stops, looks up, hesitates with the end of the rope clutched in her unfeeling fingers. The woman smiles, her head tilting to the look on her face cannot be described by empty souls, but she nods once and meet Shaw’s eyes.

“Of course,” She breathes, and Shaw knows that tone is bitter. “We haven’t discussed the subject of payment.”

Shaw is not sure what the woman means until her hands lift and settle onto the laces of her bodice. She starts to untie her knot, revealing what the soaked linen fabric barely hides. Payment, the woman had said, and Shaw knows what she’s offering. The woman thinks Shaw wants her own pound of flesh.

For a moment, for several long seconds, Shaw doesn’t object. The knot comes loose and an inch of skin is revealed. The woman is offering herself, Shaw thinks, freely and willingly. Hasn’t Shaw dreamed of this for years? Didn’t she save this woman’s life? Doesn’t the woman owe her?

The laces slip out of the first set of rings and another inch of skin is bared. Thunder shatters the silence above them and the woman jumps. Shaw does not, her eyes are focused on the woman’s collarbones, sharp and pale and wet. She imagines endless nights of passion and company on this terrible journey, a safe harbor on the deadly sea.

Another inch of skin and the swells of her benefactor’s daughter’s breasts are revealed, three inches of skin bare to the elements. Shaw licks her lips. She wants, she wants to kiss and lick and learn to love, but she knows that something given out of obligation is not given at all. The taste of this woman on her tongue would be sour with fear and Shaw knows she should return her to her hillside home.

The next inch of skin reveals a bruise, black against alabaster skin, and Shaw flinches. Finally, she is rattled. The ship bucks beneath her feet and she slides, off-balance in a new world. Is this who she is? The loyal dog to a priest who beats his children? He loves her, obedient and pious and pure.

The tragic angel is pulling her bodice open and Shaw jumps forward, crushing the woman’s hands in a painful grip. Lightning strikes the water near them and Shaw looks into the woman’s eyes, glowing in the light. Her hair stands on her arm and Shaw doesn’t know if it’s from the feel of soft skin or the closeness of death.

“Don’t,” Shaw growls, releasing the woman’s hands and stepping away. “I don’t want that. I’ll take you away. We’ll head East until we hit land.”

“Thank you,” the woman whispers, the wind whisking the words away to keep them safe. “How can I repay you?”

Shaw doesn’t know. She’s not sure she deserves repayment. The pale, scared woman is here because of Shaw’s freedom and now Shaw is giving that freedom back. She looks to the sky.

“After the storm, there will be repairs. You can help me.” She sniffs loudly, pulling herself together and starting for the door that leads inside. “Follow me. I’ll show you where I stay. There is only one bedroom, but I can sleep on the floor.”

The woman opens her mouth to disagree, to say that she can sleep on the floor, that the woman who lives on the ocean, Sameen, shouldn’t give up her home, but nothing comes out. She stands on the rusting ship that is ready to fall apart and thinks that she feels the same. There is nowhere to call home now, no routine, no torment. Just her, and the ocean, and her newfound savior.

She follows the woman inside the ship. When the door closes with a bang, it is dark. They stand together in silence while their eyes adjust and the small woman who’s thrown her life away for unknown harbor just watches her. The fallen woman blinks, exhausted from her trials.

“I’m Root,” she says, offering the sailor the only thing she has. “It’s not what he named me, but it’s my name.”

Sameen seems to understand. “I’m Shaw,” she says. “I’ll teach you to sail.”

Root nods and Shaw’s eyes linger on her face before turning away. She starts down a groaning metal hallway and Root swallows. She’s traded one cage for another and she hopes it’s worth it. Her footsteps clatter as she follows Shaw.

Months later, when they’ve stopped at several ports, when they can almost call each other friends, when they can almost have a full conversation without guilt or anger, they watch the stars together. Root likes to sit on top of the control room, likes to wrap herself in thick blankets and drink hot cocoa under the stars. Shaw likes to be near Root.

One night, when Root opens her blanket and let’s Shaw wrap them together, when Sameen opens Root’s thermos and pours their drinks into well-loved mugs, when they’re both considering holding hands, Shaw asks a question.

“What is the name of my ship? What does it mean?”

“You don’t know?” Root asks, surprised. “You can’t read?”

“I can,” Shaw asserts, “but that word is not one I know. I don’t understand it’s reference.”

Root sips her hot cocoa and looks at the sky, naming constellations in her head and reminding herself that speaking of holy things will not call attention to a god that doesn’t exist. She swallows.

“Gethsemane,” she says softly, “is where Jesus was betrayed by Judas. Where he waited to be captured and taken to his death.”

“Oh,” Shaw breathes into her mug. A light breeze dances around them, blowing their hair, but unable to penetrate their nest of blankets. “A fitting name, then. Here we wait for our own destinies and death.”

Root smiles, feeling light despite their impending doom. “I’m happy to be part of the story of us. Even if we have a tragic end, we’ll have happened. It is more than I had ever dreamed.”

“Me too,” Shaw hopes she says out loud. “If I were to love…”

“I know, Sameen. I know.”


End file.
